Looking back from 2026, I still remember the exact moment I saw the update. The Game Awards 2023 was only a few days out, and Player's Voice felt like the one place a massive game could still claw its way onto the stage. Hogwarts Legacy had the brand, the sales, the initial hype... and then it didn't matter. It was voted out.
I won't pretend I was stunned. Let's be real, 2023 was absurd. Quality titles dropped almost every single week, and Player's Voice wasn't asking which game made the most money. It was asking which game the community kept talking about, streaming, replaying, defending, and sometimes arguing over at 2 a.m. Hogwarts Legacy just didn't hold that space.
The final five for Player's Voice looked like a snapshot of the year's loudest conversations:
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🧙 Baldur's Gate 3
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🗡️ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
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🌆 Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
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🕷️ Marvel's Spider-Man 2
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✨ Genshin Impact
| Finalist | What kept it in the conversation |
|---|---|
| Baldur's Gate 3 | Massive word-of-mouth, narrative freedom, and characters the internet would not stop quoting |
| Tears of the Kingdom | A creative sandbox that kept players building and sharing long after launch |
| Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty | A redemption arc that rebuilt trust in a game people had once written off |
| Marvel's Spider-Man 2 | Polished superhero action with an immediate emotional hook |
| Genshin Impact | Live-service staying power and a huge global community that never went quiet |
Each of those had longevity. Baldur's Gate 3 especially felt like a cultural event... It broke through to people who don't even play CRPGs. Tears of the Kingdom rebuilt Hyrule and invited players to build nonsense machines for months. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty pulled off a redemption story no one saw coming. Spider-Man 2 gave players a tight, cinematic superhero rush. Genshin Impact just refused to stop being a live-service juggernaut.
Hogwarts Legacy, by comparison, sold like hotcakes on name alone. That was always going to happen. You don't need me to tell you the Wizarding World shifts units. But sold well isn't the same as mattered enough in the awards conversation. The game didn't have the staying power or the cultural ripple of Baldur's Gate 3 or Tears of the Kingdom. It was the polite guest at the party who arrived early, looked great, and then... quietly slipped out before the real arguing started.
That silence is the point. Fans pushed hard to get Hogwarts Legacy into the Player's Voice top five, and it still didn't crack the list. I saw so many hopeful posts, and then the list dropped and the replies went quiet. It wasn't a conspiracy. It was just a brutally stacked year.
And Hogwarts Legacy wasn't alone in that quiet hallway. Starfield got knocked out even earlier. That one felt weirder to me, honestly. A massive Bethesda RPG, years in the making, hyped as the next great space adventure, and it couldn't even stay in the Player's Voice race. Sure, it landed a Best RPG nomination, but by the time the show rolled around, the conversation around Starfield had curdled. Developers arguing with negative Steam reviews became a story in itself. Being up against Baldur's Gate 3 in the RPG category only made the contrast sharper. Bethesda wasn't walking into The Game Awards with momentum; it was walking in with a storm cloud.
Some people still ask me if Hogwarts Legacy deserved better. I usually pause, because I know the emotional pull of that world. But awards shows have never been about sales alone. They're about impact, community energy, and whether a game stays embedded in the culture after the credits roll. In 2023, the Player's Voice top five all managed to do that in different ways.
Hogwarts Legacy made a lot of people happy for a few weeks. I'll give it that. But by the time The Game Awards 2023 arrived, it wasn't part of the story anymore. It had become a headline about what didn't make it, and that's a much lonelier place to sit.
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